This new generation of conservatives in Congress, freed from the ideologies of the Cold War and Reagan-era defense buildups, is pushing Republicans to buck their tradition and put defense on the chopping block in pursuit of a truly smaller federal government.

The group includes GOP rookies like Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas who simply aren’t concerned by the blunt slash to defense spending as long as it accomplishes the goal of deficit reduction. Others, like Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, aren’t particularly thrilled with the way the sequester cuts are made or the way the debt deal was done to begin with, but they’re ready to talk seriously about how to make cuts to mandatory military spending. And South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney, one of the most conservative members of the House, led a group of Republicans and liberal Democrats that sent a letter to the White House and congressional leaders calling on them to include serious defense cuts in a fiscal cliff deal.

Mulvaney, who teamed up with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) earlier this year to pass an amendment that froze defense spending, said the sequester is the wrong way to cut the Pentagon’s budget and believes there are alternative ways to come up with the cuts. But, he said, “the only thing worse [than the sequester] would be to not cut spending at all.” Mulvaney has been outspoken about the need to find savings in the defense budget.

“If we don’t take defense spending seriously, it undermines our credibility on other spending issues,” Mulvaney told POLITICO. “When we speak candidly about a spending problem and we then seek to puff up the defense budget and it leads people to believe that we aren’t taking the problem seriously.”

These conservatives joined Congress as the U.S. has been trying to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the more libertarian idea of scaling back U.S. involvement in the world has caught on with some of the congressional rookies.

In an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, Gosar argued that Congress needs to let the sequester cuts go through.

“We either have a spending problem or we don’t,” Gosar said in an interview. “Going back to the military budget of 2009 — we’re still going to have the biggest military in the world. If we can’t go over this bump, we’ll never be able to get anything big done.”

“A little pain allows the medicine to go down,” the former dentist added. “We’ll at least be treating the problem in order for us to get well again.”

Other fiscal hawks have a problem not with the cuts per se but with the fact that they are made across the board. Still, they are open to looking at tightening the Pentagon’s purse strings.

“The problem with the sequester is not the cuts, but how the cuts are made. It cuts things that are not necessary at the same level it cuts things that quite honestly are necessary,” said Georgia’s Scott. “We’ve been operating under continuing resolutions for years now in this country and that means that we’ve maintained things that we probably should have gotten rid of a long time ago; that you simply can’t get rid of in a continuing resolution.”

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They are all chickenhawk pansies on the right. They are that guy in the bar who starts the fight, but when the fists fly offers to hold the coats. Anyone else tired of middle and lower class soldiers protecting corporate interests worldwide when these corporations do everything in their power to avoid paying the taxes that the US uses to fund it's military industrial complex? Defense is nothing more than red state welfare. Time to cut defense spending, there is no reason to spend 3 times more on defense today than we did in 1998.

Translation: No cuts to wasteful pork barrel spending would hit my district more then this.

That's the whole reason large numbers of people in congress aren't ok with defense cuts. Military contractors build their businesses to protect themselves from government cuts by being able to tell as many congressmen & senators as possible "if you vote to cut this wasteful military spending you'll be killing dozens/hundreds of jobs in your district, and thousands of jobs in the US".

I mean seriously, that one wasteful stealth fighter jet they cut a few years ago that the military didn't even want had jobs in over 26 different states. Why do you need people in over 26 different states to design and build a stealth fighter jet? Wouldn't they work much better, and be much cheaper logistically, in a few bigger locations, rather then dozens of smaller locations?

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."----United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler.

finally a group of republicans with stones. and they left the cold war behind. and stop being imperialist. and defense department shills. oh that is refreshing. hopefully more follow but can not say I am too hopeful. follow the money. republicans are military keyesians

finally a group of republicans with stones. and they left the cold war behind. and stop being imperialist. and defense department shills. oh that is refreshing. hopefully more follow but can not say I am too hopeful. follow the money. republicans are military keyesians

The last I heard, if you list all nations in order of the dollars they spend on defense, the US figure is bigger than the next 15 nations combined. Let that sink in a moment.

The amount of money the US spends on military operations in oil-producing nations is greater than the value of the oil those nations produce. (We pay much more per gallon than we think - it's just not all at the pump.)

I'm thinking there are probably some serious reductions to be had in defense spending that would still allow us to be the world's biggest military power by far. What do you think? Calls to maintain or even increase military spending are beyond idiotic. I suspect they come from legislators with big defense contractors in their states.

This should be a no-brainer for conservatives. Government gets smaller, so the need for taxes gets smaller too. So why are we even having this conversation? Because, I suspect, the ideological extremists are more than willing to ditch their ideals when ideals cut a little too close to home.

We should be able to easily cut 100 billion dollars a year (perhaps 200 billion) from the defense budget without compromising national security.

FYI this is some of the cuts/reductions proposed by the President/Office of Management and Budget for FY 2013...to be percise cutting 113 million from assistance for Europe, Eurasis, and Central Africa....208 million to end C-130 modernization program, 480 million for C-27J cargo aricraft re-elemination of fleet becuse it an outdated aircraft and not needed....total about 800 million for starters........